_The first book-length philosophical study on the Presocratic influences in Plotinus’ Enneads._.

This paper is devoted to the analysis of Plotinus’ citation of the Heraclitean saying B113 DK in the second treatise On the Presence of Being (VI 5 [23]). I shall argue that the use which the author of the Enneads makes of this fragment has been hitherto misunderstood by scholars and that, for this reason, the significance of the passage and its role within Plotinus’ argument have been missed. Close attention will be paid to the tool through which Plotinus conveys (...) his own reading of Heraclitus’ tenet, i.e. etymology, and to the passages in which he both lays down and puts into practice the programmatic guidelines for his interpretation of the Presocratic. In addition, I shall interpret Plotinus’ recourse to a wordplay which is, in character, quite Heraclitean as a proof of the importance of his philosophical engagement with the Obscure. (shrink)

This catalogue is divided into two parts. Part 1 presents basic bibliographical information on books and journal issues that consist exclusively or in large part in papers devoted to the Presocratics and the Sophists. Part 2 lists the papers on Presocratic and Sophistic topics found in the volumes, providing name of author, title, and page numbers, and in the case of reprinted papers, the year of original publication. In some cases Part 2 lists the complete contents of volumes, not only (...) the Presocratic and Sophistic-related papers. Annual updates are submitted as additional files below. (shrink)

Aristotle’s Naïve Somatism is a re-interpretation of Aristotle’s cognitive psychology in light of certain presuppositions he holds about the living animal body. The living animal body is presumed to be sensitive, and Aristotle grounds his account of cognition in a rudimentary proprioceptive awareness one has of her body. With that presupposed metaphysics under our belts, we are in a position to see that Aristotle in de Anima (cognition chapters at least) has a di erent explanatory aim in view than that (...) which the literature generally imputes to him. He is not explicating what we would call the “mental”—the private, inner realm which some take to be of a di erent kind than the physical—as most take him to be. His explanandum is content acquisition; the explanans is showing how the body becomes like various aspects of objects. Although he famously describes the mind (nous) as unmixed with the body, he is guided by functional constrains—nous cannot be limited or qualified if it is to potentially think all things. Thus, his inquiry into cognition is philosophically limited from a contemporary perspective. Aristotle is not doing philosophy of mind, for he doesn’t seem to find the “mental” philosophically perplexing. (shrink)

It will be shown in this article that an ontological approach for some problems related to the interpretation of Quantum Mechanics could emerge from a re-evaluation of the main paradox of early Greek thought: the paradox of Being and non-Being, and the solutions presented to it by Plato and Aristotle. More well known are the derivative paradoxes of Zeno: the paradox of motion and the paradox of the One and the Many. They stem from what was perceived by classical philosophy (...) to be the fundamental enigma for thinking about the world: the seemingly contradictory results that followed from the co-incidence of being and non-being in the world of change and motion as we experience it, and the experience of absolute existence here and now. The most clear expression of both stances can be found, again following classical thought, in the thinking of Heraclitus of Ephesus and Parmenides of Elea. The problem put forward by these paradoxes reduces for both Plato and Aristotle to the possibility of the existence of stable objects as a necessary condition for knowledge. Hence the primarily ontological nature of the solutions they proposed: Plato's Theory of Forms and Aristotle's metaphysics and logic. Plato's and Aristotle's systems are argued here to do on the ontological level essentially the same: to introduce stability in the world by introducing the notion of a separable, stable object, for which a principle of contradiction is valid: an object cannot be and not-be at the same place at the same time. So it becomes possible to forbid contradiction on an epistemological level, and thus to guarantee the certainty of knowledge that seemed to be threatened before. After leaving Aristotelian metaphysics, early modern science had to cope with these problems: it did so by introducing "space" as the seat of stability, and "time" as the theater of motion. But the ontological structure present in this solution remained the same. Therefore the fundamental notion `separable system', related to the notions observation and measurement, themselves related to the modern concepts of space and time, appears to be intrinsically problematic, because it is inextricably connected to classical logic on the ontological level. We see therefore the problems dealt with by quantum logic not as merely formal, and the problem of `non-locality' as related to it, indicating the need to re-think the notions `system', `entity', as well as the implications of the operation `measurement', which is seen here as an application of classical logic on the material world. (shrink)

This thesis is a study of Archaic and Early Classical philosophical poetry within the competitive context which characterized the poetic production of that period. In particular, I evaluate the ideas and arguments of Xenophanes, Parmenides, Epicharmus and Empedocles in the context of the social and cultural aspects of Archaic poetic performance in order to evaluate their response to traditional agonism. As I argue, these figures entered the poetic contest not only to defeat their poetic adversaries, but also to transform and (...) redefine the terms of the competition itself. Chapter 1 is devoted to the analysis of three institutionalized forms of poetic agonism: sympotic games, rhapsodic contests, and dramatic performances. In chapter 2, I evaluate the socio-political import of Xenophanes' poetry and argue that his conception of the greatest god serves to substantiate his moral prescriptions aimed at eliminating civic conflict. In chapter 3, I examine Parmenides' original notion of alētheia as logical deduction, whereby he provides a solution to the problem of the truth-status of poetry stemming from the Muses' ability to inspire both genuine and false accounts, as narrated in Hesiod's Theogony. Chapter 4 provides an analysis of Empedocles' polemic allusions to his poetic and philosophical predecessors. I argue that Empedocles' confidence in his poetic authority is ultimately grounded on his self-declared divine status, which grants him a unique and comprehensive poetic knowledge. In chapter 5, I evaluate Epicharmus' philosophical fragments against the background of early rhetoric and argue that, through the use of philosophically inspired arguments, Epicharmus aimed to make manifest philosophy's agonistic potential and to show how it could be exploited to one's own advantage. (shrink)

This presentation traces an historical root of the reductio ad absurdum mode of argumentation in Greek philosophy. I propose a new understanding of the liar paradox as an instance of this mode of argumentation. I show that the paradox was crea ted as part of a refutational argument in the controversy over the justification of realism and the realists concepts of truth and certainty. The paradox was part of the dialectical style of Greek scepticism, which was characterized, inter alia, by (...) the u se of the reductio ad absurdum. The paradox turns out to be a metaphysical and epistemological argument. (shrink)